O, that this too toosolid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'dHis canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, (135)
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: (140)
So excellent a king; that was, to this,Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, (145)
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month --
Let me not think on't -- Frailty, thy name is woman! --
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body, (150)Like Niobe, all tears: -- why she, even she --
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month: (155)
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good: (160)But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

Shakespeare and Seneca

"In the sixteenth century the popularity of Seneca's tragedies was immense. To English dramatists, struggling to impose form and order on the shapeless, though vigorous, native drama, Seneca seemed to offer an admirable model. His tragedies contained abundance of melodrama to suit the popular taste, whilst his sententious philosophy and moral maxims appealed to the more learned, and all was arranged in a clear-cut form, of which the principle of construction was easy to grasp." E. M. Spearing.Read on...